THE NIGHT

THE NIGHT; Artists, In Paint and In Person

By PHOEBE HOBAN

Published: March 1, 1998

THE opening of the Museum of Modern Art's Chuck Close retrospective on Wednesday night was the biggest non-Grammy party of the week, and it attracted its own list of mega-stars. It was hard to know which to focus on -- the people or the pictures in the exhibition, since they were frequently identical. Apparently not everyone was riveted by the music-industry extravaganza taking place just a few blocks away.

There was the painter Alex Katz, strolling by a larger-than-life image of himself, followed by Robert Ryman, Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. The 11 rooms of Mr. Close's pointillist portraits looked like a Brobdingnagian photo album. Although nearly 4,000 fans mobbed the museum by midnight, it felt almost like a family reunion.

''The subjects of most of the paintings were there,'' Arne Glimcher, chairman of the Pace Wildenstein Gallery, which represents Mr. Close, said later. ''I've never seen that kind of a turnout for an artist before.'' Mr. Glimcher couldn't fight the pandemonium and left right after dinner.

''It was like a very 60's event,'' said the curator Klaus Kertess, whose Bykert Gallery had shown Mr. Close early in his career. Mr. Kertess no longer sports the mustache he had when the painter captured him on canvas in 1976. But he was nonetheless instantly recognizable. ''It got a little tedious being rounded up and pointed at,'' he said.

The artist Jud Nelson was standing in front of an enormous collage Mr. Close had done of him in 1982. ''Chuck said I should sleep on my face for four or five days and not comb my hair and that's how I would model for him,'' he said. ''I don't know how he managed to get that greasy look using dry paper chips.''

There were two paintings of the artist Mark Greenwold, done almost 20 years apart. ''I thought at the time I looked like Montgomery Clift, so it was a shock,'' Mr. Greenwold said of the portrait of himself as a young man. He pointed out a huge stray eyelash that the artist had included.

Cindy Sherman, who is used to seeing large portraits of herself, had no problem relating to her image. ''On one level, I don't really feel it's a portrait of me,'' she said. ''With Chuck's work, it gets transformed into a painting.''

Many were struck by the opening's warm and fuzzy feeling -- not exactly the usual killer-art-world aura. ''It was one of the most affectionate art world atmospheres I've ever been in,'' the painter April Gornik said.

Lucas Samaras, whose haloed image stares imperially out of several portraits, said, ''Of all the successful, aging artists I know, Chuck's the one I least want to strangle because he's avoided the pitfalls of being overpompous and self-important.''

Dressed in an Armani tuxedo, Mr. Close was besieged by well-wishers. How did it feel to be surrounded by 30 years of his own work? ''It's like all my children came home,'' the artist said.